round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his
wont to walk up and down thus, without speaking--an exercise which used to
remind me of Chateaubriand's father in the great chamber of the Château
de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then
returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a background of
shadow, and then again in silence faded nearly out of view.

This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less
accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect. I have known my
father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very
much, I was also much in awe of him.

While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events
of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed
routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering
and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable
seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and
I don't think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned among
us.

There was not even that mild religious bustle which sometimes besets the
wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for
some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a
Swedenborgian. But he did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the
old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the old housekeeper,
Mrs. Rusk, and myself to the parish church every Sunday. And my father, in
the view of the honest rector who shook his head over him--'a cloud without
water, carried about of winds, and a wandering star to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness'--corresponded with the 'minister' of his church, and
was provokingly contented with his own fertility and illumination; and